Nobby Clark

“Nobby” Clark lived in a three room hut at Wairaka Point from 1945, when he retired from the Wellington Gas Company, until three years before his death in 1966. Nobby first came to the grassy spot just past Weku’s Cave, around the corner from Wairaka Rock, in 1910 with his two friends Tom Pudney and Bill Spencer. They built the hut, originally with two rooms, to use as a fishing bach after agreeing to pay the landowner one pound a year in rent. The rent was never collected as the three friends rescued a valuable ram with a broken leg. The farmer said that saving the ram was worth far more than any rent. The three friends used the hut as a weekend retreat for thirty years.

There was a small creek by the hut that he dammed to supply running water to several taps and an outside shower. Nobby also had a tin bath that he filled with hot water heated in a kerosene tin. At one time he even had electric lighting when his nephew put up a wind powered generator which charged two truck batteries. When the batteries became too heavy to handle Nobby went back to kerosene lamps. Two gallons of kerosene, carried round the coast by a friend, would last several months. He was a keen fisherman and gardener, growing up to 100 tomato plants from seeds. Once a week he walked around the beach or over the hills to buy his other supplies including meat and tinned food for emergencies. If the coast was impassable because of high seas, Nobby would climb up past the waterfall and walk over the hills to Pukerua Bay. Gardening, fishing, cooking and reading kept Nobby busy and there was a fireplace to keep him warm in winter. He had several bookshelves filled with books ranging from sixty-year-old novels up to the very latest westerns.

Nobby referred to himself as the “Caretaker of Wairaka” and all agreed he was very friendly and welcoming and not a hermit at all.

Long time resident of Pukerua Bay Jack Waddilove recalled, “He wasn’t only a character of a man, he was also one of the nicest blokes I ever met in my life. I remember going round with my kids at different times, and he’d always call out, ‘Come on in!’ He was just that kind of a man.”

Les Hayward wrote: “In the late 1950s as a really keen fisherman (born 1945), Saturday I used to leave Buckley Rd about 5am, walk to Newtown and catch the first tram to the railway station, to catch the first train getting off at Pukerua Bay. I had bought a pint of milk and a Dominion Newspaper which after the walk around the beach I gave to Nobby. I am 75 now, it wasn’t many years ago that I realized how he must have looked forward to seeing that school kid walking towards his hut. A cup of great smokey tea and where his best snapper holes were my reward.”

Roy Johnston recalled to Hugh Young, “I had friends who used to come to Paremata, get off the train there and catch herrings, put them in a kerosene tin, live and get on the next train coming out and get off and walk around to Nobby Clarks, take the paper or something round to him and then fish off Wai rock with live herring bait to catch kingfish.”

On 14 December 1956 Miss Nora Frizzell, head teacher at Pukerua Bay School, wrote the following in the Pukerua Bay School Log:

“The children were given a whole day on the beach.

The seniors journeyed to Plimmerton by train equipped with sunhats, lunch and sandshoes.  From Plimmerton we walked round the beach to Pukerua Bay.   Many items of interest were noted. Gulls evidently endeavouring to distract our attention, led to our finding their well-camouflaged young on almost inaccessible rocks.  Rough nests of sticks and sea-weed were noticed amongst the drift wood piled at high water mark.  Gull chicks in all stages of development were found.

Several boys caught, barehanded, huge crayfish while dozens of crabs were captured.

The hut of Mr Clark was a fount of interest. Situated a mile south of Pukerua Bay beside a small spring, the hut consists largely of timber salvaged from the beach, and was built by Mr Clark and his friends. Mr Clark enjoys his solitude among sea, rocks and sky, and journeys to village or town only when it becomes necessary to replenish his larder.”

Although Nobby was known to most Pukerua Bays residents, few knew he was born in Birmingham in 1880 and that his real name was Albert Augustus Clark. He worked in a footwear factory as a shoe turner, making leather soles for shoes, before joining the Coldstream Guards on the 15 May 1899 just short of his nineteenth birthday. Nobby served in the Anglo-Boer War. He was granted two good conduct badges and received the Queen’s South Africa Medal with Belfast, Cape Colony and Orange Free State clasps; and the King’s South Africa Medal with South Africa 1901 and South Africa 1902 clasps. He stayed with the Coldstream Guards for another seven years before being discharged as medically unfit in 1909 and coming to New Zealand. He was a reservist in the First World War. He died in 1966 at the Levin War Veterans’ Home. Later that year Alistair Campbell’s poem Nobby Clark was published in Landfall.

All evidence of Nobby’s hut vanished after a fire except for some wooden posts. Rock falls have covered the site of his boat shed. The waterfall and stream still remain. In 2022 heavy rain scoured out the stream to reveal Nobby’s water pipe.

Living in a three-room hut at Wairaka Point was somewhat of a contrast to the seven years Nobby Clark spent as a Coldstream Guard living in Wellington Barracks and guarding Buckingham Palace.